Talk:2607: Geiger Counter

Vanilla joke, but funny. Nafedalbi (talk) 18:41, 15 April 2022 (UTC)Nafedalbi

It's Randall's "dad joke". Barmar (talk) 19:23, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, yeah. I impulsively went "wow... Randall's really jumped the stick figure shark." --172.70.110.121 06:32, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Not me. After plumbing the depths of Unicode and trying to describe a Taylor series expansion from square one, this is a welcome relief. 172.70.214.81 07:34, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

When does an ordinary joke become a dad joke? When it becomes apparent. 172.70.130.121 10:31, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I added telegraph wires (UK-only term, possibly, and anachronistic as they are telephone cables, so feel free to change to be US-centric) and birds seem happy to sit on pole-suspended POTS cables as much as power-lines, so the linked heat-effect thing is definitely a minority necessity. I think it's just a perch. Though we probably have more signal-wires. Most(?) streets more than a few decades old have telegraph poles feeding wires to established properties (even if cable/FTTP has been dug into trenches) but mains electricity tends to have been subsurface for much longer, with only HV national/rural-area transmission grids up on pylons/poles. Obviously there are a lot more perching birds out in the countryside, where they may dominate (but still the 'telegraph' may follow road or rail routes to service the villages and isolated inhabitations along them) but you don't tend to see birds atop the larger lines at all... Too high up? Too hot? I've seen rooks/etc happily doing a Hitchcock upon a pylon itself, apparently enjoying the communal view. 172.70.90.63 18:54, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

For the record, User:Avni at 19:30 UTC on 2022-04-15 deleted everything on this page
--FrankHightower (talk) 04:11, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The title text joke may be understood more easily by reading "stood under" in place of "understood". 162.158.107.124 19:37, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Living in Manhattan, you learn to notice when an area is full of bird droppings and avoid standing there. You also need to pay attention when parking your car. Certain lamp posts (where the lamp is cantilevered over the street) near Central Park often tend to have a large accumulation under them. 108.162.246.178 19:47, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I do not understand the joke in the title text, so if somebody could please write an explanation, that would be great. Also, this is my first ever full comic description! Yay! I don't know what categories this fits in, if somebody could also put those in that would be great. MrYellow04 (talk) 19:58, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I suggest you stand under a wire with lots of birds on it for a while. It will hit you. Barmar (talk) 20:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Dirty birdy in the sky, why you do that in my eye? Boy I'm glad that cows can't fly! TCMits (talk) 14:15, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Randall, come here. Yes, right there. Stand still. THWACK! THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK! That is all, you may go now. 20:41, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The explanation makes clear the side of the pun regarding the Geiger counting clicking, but for non-native English speakers, the phrase "it clicked" meaning "I understood" may need clarification. 162.158.166.213 21:17, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I thought it meant the birds were dangerously mutated because of the radioactivity, but now I understand. 172.69.34.84 22:00, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Just make sure you don't open your mouth and tilt your head back. 172.70.90.63 22:59, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Also possibly related to this news story https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/unprotected-russian-soldiers-disturbed-radioactive-dust-chernobyls-red-forest-2022-03-28/

Calling the pun a parody of another joke is weird. Jokes aren’t parodied. Parodies aren’t made of general things people say. It can be a play on that other joke, but not a parody of it. It’s not making fun of the other joke. 108.162.245.69 11:24, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I somewhat agree with you. It's a 'type of' pun related to the Tom Swifty, which I edited in just now. I didn't actually remove the claim of parody. Perhaps someone else should also do that without hesitation... (...says I, unerringly!) 162.158.159.43 15:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Dates for the Trinity Site Open House are April 2 and October 15 for 2022. Bring your own geiger counter. TCMits (talk) 14:15, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

...and possibly a time-machine? ;) 162.158.159.43 15:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Leonard Cohen reference?

It seems to me that the title text has to be somehow referencing one of Leonard Cohen’s better known songs, “Bird on the Wire”, from the very specific phrasing there. 108.162.245.69 11:21, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

It's a fairly common phrase. Including the 1990 Goldie Hawn / Mel Gibson

[Bird on a Wire https://g.co/kgs/QZ6LpN%7C film]. Iggynelix (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2022 (UTC)